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In the age of the smart phone, it may interest you to learn that it was the old-school units that dominated sales. In fact, if we have extend the 10 highest selling mobile phones list to the top twenty before we find smart phone representation.
In this scenario, the iPhone 3GS makes an appearance at position 19, having sold 35 million units for Apple. The 4S also would feature, in position 12 having sold 60 million units since its launch in 2011. Samsung, having been a relatively late entrant to the mobile phone game would hold down two positions, 17 and 18, with their Galaxy S II and S III units, which each sold around 40 million units.
The top ten though, is dominated by the old school phones of the late 90’s and 2000’s. The all time top-selling phone in history cleared over a quarter of a billion sales, making it the best seller by nearly 100 million. Can you guess which it is?
The list also serves as a timely reminder about just how popular Nokia were. It’s timely because of their recent re-emergence, but as a brand they were totally dominant throughout the 90’s and the first decade of this century.
It is also important to remember the environment in which many of these phones thrived. Competition was lower and market penetration was, in many of their cases, just starting to accelerate through the early adopters and into wider market uptake.
In the hyper-competitive environment that we are in now, just look how many phones dominate our anticipated gadgets of 2013 list, its hard to see another phone reaching this level of popularity.
On that basis, is the winner of this compilation going to go down as the best-selling mobile phone in history?